Trading Processor Cycles for Communication

Abstract

"Trade computation for communication whenever possible" has been the conventional wisdom to save bandwidth and power in wireless domain. We glanced at the merging trends of technology and the applications, and identified a number of areas where the processor cycles can be traded for network bandwidth. These areas are - file transfer, shared document edits, remote authentication, and verification of remotely available codes. We collect and present some of the theory-paradigms that have given birth to results potentially usable towards saving bandwidth at the cost of computation. We hope to make a case for incorporating the insights collected in this paper from various fields of complexity theory, into the design of network protocols for the future. In the penumbra of this over-arching goal, we also suggest how the engine of "Probabilistic Checking of Proofs" (PCP) can be used for remote authentication purposes, resulting in much smaller network overhead and leading to very efficient usage of bandwidth and power. Whether this seems to be an interesting route, we then present the algorithmic challenges that need be solved and argue why such a theoretical cranking may be just as worth.